


Colors.

by Bacner



Series: Colors of S.H.I.E.L.D. [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), MCU, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Opposites Attract, Slow Burn, The Bus, Truth & Lies, White Color, alternate universe - freeform, black color, blue color, coloring book, green color, red color, yellow color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21611998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bacner/pseuds/Bacner
Summary: A Bus-era divergence. Grant loves yellow, Skye loves red. Grant and Skye actually have a heart to heart talk. Will anything come out of it?
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Phil Coulson/Melinda May, Skye | Daisy Johnson/Grant Ward
Series: Colors of S.H.I.E.L.D. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1564630
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	1. Of Yellow and Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lila_luscious1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lila_luscious1/gifts).



> Disclaimer: all characters belong to Marvel.

Grant Douglas Ward hated his mission: it was so pointless! Perhaps, no, true, Coulson did come back from the dead something that John was desperately needing to know – i.e. how to return from that place, since he was dying day by day – but! Was all this song and dance necessary? John and Phil Coulson used to be friends! Didn’t that matter?

…Well, yes, as a son of a professional U.S. politician, and a Republican on top of that, Grant wasn't really a big authority or a specialist on the topic of friendship, but, still, somehow after all of John’s stories about when he was Grant’s age, Grant kind of expected John to just ask his old friend and not go through this entire song-and-dance, this cloak-and-dagger shite, this entire S.H.I.E.L.D. vs Hydra crap. 

…Of course, there was also a possibility that some of the others, starting with Fury and Hill, were onto this entire S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra crap and this possibility was not giving Grant any more of spiritual peace. Rather, he was feeling more restless than ever, and he did not even know why. He needed to do something. Kill someone. Save someone. Do something. Maybe even do someone. Cough. 

Skye… Grant was not sure what to think about her. She was not even his type, for crying aloud, though she had some amazingly nice legs, (and everything above), and, uh, he was not a monk, and he really did not know what to do.

Act casual, act nicely, act confused and socially retarded… not a stretch, considering that right now Grant was channeling his inner civilian, he was channeling his past that he had lost a long time ago, and he was really hating doing that. More precisely, he hated himself for doing this, he hated John for causing him to do this, he hated everyone else for seeing him doing this, and he needed to do something, before he just went insane. 

Grant Ward had went practically through every possible exercise devised by S.H.I.E.L.D., and Hydra, and some other sources that taught him from specifically going insane, and now that he was on the Bus, amongst Coulson’s dream team, almost near the top of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s pinnacle of power, they all were failing. For the very first time in a very long while, Grant Douglas Ward was being himself – well, his potential self – and he hated it. The person whom he once was, and the agent of- Whatever that he had become, were at odds within him. He hated it. 

However, what could he do? In theory – quite a lot. In his current guise, however – not so much. His gaze fell upon a- coloring book. Skye must have brought it with her along with the board games that she was coercing him to join her at. Grant was never the most courteous of people, civilian or agent, and normally he would just tell her off, but in his new-old-original-borrowed skin, he could not. Because this version of Grant Douglas Ward truly was that polite.

Grant hated it. Also, since we were talking verbs here, he was coloring. Or rather drawing, because the pages in the coloring book were actually blank, a blank canvas that permitted people to draw there whatever they wanted to. Therefore, Grant Douglas Ward was drawing a desert. A bright yellow desert, almost empty of life – there were camels, a camel caravan somewhere far along the line of the horizon, there were spiky desert shrubs closer to the front of the page, there were traces of an irrigation system off to one side of the page. Hmm. Yellow on its own was not enough. He needed some other colors. However, which ones?

Engrossed in his thoughts, Grant reached out for one of the other colored pencils. What he grabbed instead were an arm and a hand. Small. Surprisingly warm for such a small limb. Surprisingly strong. Still engrossed and certainly not up to his regular self, Grant shifted his gaze, he looked up the arm to the shoulder, the chest, and the face, and realized that it was Skye. 

In addition, her face was almost as red as the colored pencil that he was planning to take.

“Hello!” Skye said bravely, or rather – squeaked bravely.

“Sorry,” Grant broke his grip and jerked his own hand away, as if it was singed. “I was just- coloring the page. Drawing on the page? Whatever. See?” He showed his drawing to his rookie. “See?”

“It’s… nice. Very yellow but nice,” Skye said carefully. “Ever thought about adding other colors to it?”

“Feel free,” Grant muttered, moving further away from his rookie, (though still remaining on the sofa). Judging by an odd look that appeared in Skye’s eyes this was not the best strategy either. “Here! Here’s your colored pencil!”

“Red? Really?” Skye spoke with a very odd, and a very cute, facial expression. “All righty then!” She carefully took the red colored pencil and began, to, well – draw. She drew a rocky ravine that gradually became almost some sort of a square, a meeting place, full of people. It was adjacent to Grant’s desert, but still separate. The transition from yellow to red, from one place to another was gradual, but it was there, and-

Grant couldn’t help but notice that while his end was practically devoid of life – of organic life, (because in S.H.I.E.L.D. there was always a possibility of an inorganic life form, cough Fantastic 4 cough), Skye’s end was full of life, full of people, it was crowded, it was full of crowds, doing – something.

“What are your people doing – Skye?” he asked a sudden question. “Other than crowding?”

“They are having a meeting, they are having a discussion, they are having a celebration, they are having – something,” Skye snapped, again turning red herself, eyeing Ward. “Does it matter?”

“No, I was just asking a question,” Grant pinched his nose. “You’re a people person, aren’t you?”

“Yes, no, maybe,” Skye muttered, looking down at their conjoined work. “And you’re not?”

“Until I came onto the Bus, all of my missions were out in the field, sometimes with others, but certainly nothing like this,” Grant muttered, as he indicated the Bus around them. “Do you like the great outdoors?”

“I- I lived in a van,” Skye replied vaguely.

“According to Fitz, if your van was a horse, you should’ve been reported to ASPCA-“

“Fitz is a big fat boo-boo head,” Skye said crossly. “I-“

“-not the person you’re pretending to be,” Grant said calmly. “I can see it in your eyes, sometimes. I do not know who you really are, I do not know what your goals are, your Skye the hacktivist persona is magnificent and authentic, but I know. I just know. Skye, or whatever your name is, why are you here?”

“Oh?” Skye’s gaze did its’ best to pierce and impale Grant, but it was nowhere near enough. “And who are you, then?”

“Me?” Grant’s gaze connected with Skye’s directly and Grant realized that it was time to end the lies, because it was the right time for that. “I am Grant Douglas Ward. I am the protégé of John Garrett, who was the protégé of Fury himself. He was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., once. Now, he is not, and I do not know who he is anymore. I do not know who I am anymore. Rookie, do you know as to who you are?”

Skye shifted, looked away, and then looked back – very intently. She was not Ward’s type, of course, but she was really lovely all the same.

“I,” Skye bit her lips, “I- I am Mary-Sue Poots from St. Agnes’ orphanage. I am looking for my true family-“ she abruptly cut herself off and looked at Ward. “Why Aren’t you laughing or condemning me?”

“No,” Grant looked and sounded genuinely thoughtful here, instead. “Merely curious. Skye, or Mary-Sue, or whatever your name is, what will you do if your parents aren’t good people? I mean, my parents, my family, are career Republican politicians, and that is all that I will say about them. What if your parents are like that?”

Skye – or Mary-Sue – was silent for a while, and then she spoke. “You have a point, and I won’t judge you back, but I’m not you, and I need to find my parents because… because they’re my parents.” The last words were whispered rather than said.

Grant stared at Skye for a long time. “Well, good luck with that,” he muttered, as he got onto his feet, “and now I need to write a report to Fury-“

“Why?” Skye jumped onto her feet as well.

“…Not because of you,” Grant said flatly. “Rookie, you’re in S.H.I.E.L.D. now. Ever played chess?”

“Mmm,” Skye said vaguely. “It’s just like checkers, right?”

Grant gave her a good long hard and unamused look – just like old times, only not. “Well,” he finally said, sounding almost amused, almost human, “S.H.I.E.L.D. is like a 3-D chess set, with everyone playing their own game. You may win your match, you may lose or may be a tie, but it is just your match, nothing more. S.H.I.E.L.D. will endure.” He looked away. “And now, if you don’t mind, I need to write a report to director Fury and live with its’ consequences.” He paused and added. “But now, it’s not about you, rookie, so you can relax.”

“Gee, thanks,” Skye muttered crossly. “That said, can I hang around? Maybe I want to meet the director myself again-“ she paused, remembering her one and only meeting with Fury, way back when. For one and only meeting, it could've gone better. Still...

“Good idea,” Grant nodded seriously, “director Fury is god, really. He probably learned everything that is to know about you in the first twenty-four hours of you joining us. He may even know just who your parents are for real!”

Skye just showed him her finger.

“That’s nice,” Grant did not appear to be upset at all. “Shall we go?” he asked his rookie, faux-gallantly. 

“Yes, let’s,” Daisy nodded back, and they left together.

_The end?_


	2. Of Black and White

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil and Melinda have some time to themselves, for a change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: everyone belongs to Marvel, again.

Grant and his new-current rookie were absent, (because the Bus was at the S.H.I.E.L.D.'s HQ base so they could interact with other agents that were not on their immediate team). The FitzSimmons were busy with…whatever they were usually busy with. And Phil was…just Phil, aka himself, and that suited Melinda May fine. She wanted to be alone. Really.

Everything was… working out smoothly, just as Fury planned, no doubt. Coulson was working, or functioning, whatever, within this artificial team that Fury and Hill had constructed with Melinda’s help, of course, and what the Hell Melinda was doing? No, belay that – what the Hell Melinda was doing in S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore? The Black Widow, aka Natasha Romanoff, has once confronted the Cavalry about this already, and since then the two women were not talking to each other anymore – not that they did before, contrary to what Coulson and maybe Ward had told Skye, S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t exactly a monolith happy family that it may would like itself to be – but it was this brisk discussion that caused the two women to flat-out avoid and ignore each other, and now the Black Widow was an Avenger, and the Cavalry… didn’t care.

No, and that was possibly the problem that lay behind the Cavalry’s current predicament: she genuinely did not care that the other woman was in the Avengers; she did not care about the Avengers per se, to be more precise. Fury – as it was evident by him hiring Maria Hill to be his second now – did not really care about ambitions, at least officially, but unofficially? Ambitions were the grease that made the sprockets and caterpillar tracks of S.H.I.E.L.D. go smoothly, as people who joined it were ambitious and aimed their ambitions at the top echelons of S.H.I.E.L.D., (in theory, anyway), so that was good. 

And if you weren’t ambitious? Actually, that was not a problem either: you just sank to the bottom, or eventually left S.H.I.E.L.D. at least in part and were re-classified as an asset instead. Mentally, Melinda did not have a problem with that; emotionally though, in her case, this meant Andrew, and Melinda was so not ready to deal with him… she was not ready to deal with anyone; she could just pretend. In fact, she could pretend very convincingly, but the more the pretending her was stuck alongside others who did not pretend, the harder it got.

…Yes, there was also Grant Ward; the younger agent also was hiding something, but then again, this was S.H.I.E.L.D. Everyone was planning something; everyone was going for something, so why should the younger agent be an exception? For all of her misanthropy, Melinda couldn’t blame the other agent for being just like everyone else, while she felt like bursting out of her skin, out of her _self_ , out of her identity as the great Cavalry, (which she had never sought or wanted in the first place), so badly that she didn’t even know what to do!

…And no, it was not menopause either, Melinda was sure of it. Yes, she was not getting any younger – possibly, there were means of rejuvenating yourself, but she did not know of them or of access to them – but they were not the only reason behind her current issues! She was just tired of pretending, tired of fakery-!

“Hey, Mel!” Coulson, one of the primary focuses of her irritation, misery, and so on, spoke-up suddenly, startling the other woman from her mental processes, (something that didn't happen to Melinda too often). “I didn’t hear you, but come on in!”

“Liar,” Melinda muttered beneath her breath, but her heart was not in it, and so she complied. “And what are you doing?” she asked instead.

“Oh, Skye, or maybe one of the FitzSimmons left a drawing book with plenty of unused pages and colored pencils, so here I am!” Coulson said brightly.

“Phil,” Melinda gave her oldest friend, (literally), an evil eye. “You couldn’t draw worth a whit. We may have changed since junior high, but I doubt that that much. You still cannot draw. What did you draw?”

“I dispute that!” Coulson said brightly, his eyes almost sparkling: whatever dark funk Melinda had existed in before, she was out of it – for now. “See for yourself! I can draw!”

“Draw what?” Melinda muttered, even as she ignored the other drawings on the page. “What is it? What are those black marks on white paper?”

“Well aren’t you being poetic!” Coulson muttered in some surprise. When they were younger, – much younger, – Melinda used to be poetic, but not anymore, not any longer... “And to answer your questions, those are tracks. They are tracks on winter snow, see? Here is a fox – it brushed its’ tracks with its’ tail in its’ passing. Here are bird tracks; over there are tracks of sleigh; here are tracks of a parent and a child. And here,” he grew somewhat embarrassed as he did, whenever Melinda caught him red-handed doing anything, really, “tracks grew into letters, as written, or drawn, by a kindergarten child. You got me here, Mel – I got bored.”

“Of course you did, Phil – you’re always bored whenever you’re alone: you just need to be outside, hanging around someone – anyone, really,” Melinda sighed. “This sky- I mean Skye-girl - is the same way.”

“I know.”

“And now she’s working with Grant Ward, whose problems, really, at heart is that he likes animals better than people,” Melinda sighed. “Phil, what is your endgame here?”

“I don’t know, Melinda,” Phil sounded oddly, atypically serious for himself. “Ever since the alien invasion of NYC, ever since Fury reviewed- I mean, revived me, I haven’t felt like myself lately. I mean – no, I am still me, I remember everything that happened to me before and after the battle, but something is different now, and that is not a good thing. Sometimes I dream of things that I cannot remember when I am awake. I know – I admit – that I am not as good a person as the younger members of our team assume that I am… what are you doing?”

“Showing you what a real drawing looks like,” Melinda muttered, as she took a plain black pencil and began to draw on top of Skye’s own red drawing. “See? It’s also Skye’s city of whatever, but it’s night now. TTC – or its’ counterpart – is taking the last people home, people on foot are also going home, everything is dying down, only the lights on the capital’s top tower are glowing, as if they were guiding lights on a ship in fog – ship, Phil Coulson, not sheep, so wipe the smile off your face!”

“Didn’t dream of smiling, Mel,” Coulson did his best to look innocent, as only he knew how. “Although, what kind of city is it?”

“Sokovian,” Melinda replied simply. “I was a participant in operation Waterfall, remember?”

“Mmm,” Phil nodded solemnly, “I do. This really was a low point of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Balkan presence?”

“Yes,” Melinda nodded, thinking hard. Ward did mention that his SO, John Garrett, was hurt badly when it all went FUBAR, but was it important? She could not decide. Maybe she should tell Phil-

“Hey! There you are!” Skye’s voice cut sharply into Melinda’s train of thought, but the younger woman’s presence was not too unwelcome, (unlike the usual). “Glad to see both of you!”

Both Phil and Melinda turned around, looking at the younger couple. “You two seem- flushed,” Coulson muttered, “did you have fun?”

“I defeated Colusky in an eating competition!” Skye said grandly, her eyes shining like wet velvet, even as Grant was pointedly silent, looking anywhere but at her, really. “Got us quite a bit of a bet back!”

“Skye, I don’t approve of gambling-“

“We got you a captain America poster, new!” Skye gave the item in question to the older couple.

“Okay, this changes nothing in the previous standard, but thank you,” Phil began to pull the poster to him, but Melinda’s grip on it – and when did she get it in? – did not relent. “Mel-“

“Phil. It’s captain Rogers,” Mel pointed out reasonably, not feeling the need to elaborate that thanks to Hill and Fury, captain Rogers became an unanimous sex-symbol of S.H.I.E.L.D., regardless of any other disagreements that the agents of the Strategic Homeland- etc., etc., Department had between each other.

“People, please, don’t fight,” Skye sounded more concerned than jubilant now, even more so than when Grant explained to her on the way back to the Bus that tomorrow she will be start to train extra hard to work off the huge meal that she had today. While Skye could really live without exercises, she realized that not if she wanted to stay in S.H.I.E.L.D., so that was okay.

Right now though, what was happening was not okay. AC was AC, and while Skye’s relationship with Melinda May was something else, she did not want them to fight either – it brought back too many bad memories of her childhood. “Maybe the FitzSimmons can make a copy of it-?”

“Skye, do you know the effort that S.H.I.E.L.D. staff put into a vintage copy as this one?” Coulson said huffily. “No one can make a copy that’s as good-“ He stopped and looked at the doorway. The genius couple of FitzSimmons were peeking through it. “You two can, can you?”

“Maybe,” the duo said as one, timidly took the poster, (as well as the drawing book and the colored pencils for some reason) and fled to their lab, their legs carrying them as fast they could, (because Melinda could be that scary. Really).

“So, maybe we can have some sort of a team-building exercise? Together? All four of us?” Skye said brightly, seeing how Melinda’s facial expression at this unspoken epiphany was very frightening, in a sad way. “Please?”

Melinda blinked and looked at the younger woman. For some reason she reminded Melinda of Phil. Hopefully, though, Skye was not Phil’s daughter, because that just wouldn’t be right-

“Good idea!” Phil echoed just as faux-brightly. “Everybody, follow to the main room! Board games await!”

And surprisingly, not even Ward protested. Melinda would like to claim that it made things worse, but somehow, it made things better instead.

_To be concluded…_


	3. Of Green and Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The conclusion to the story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: all of the characters here aren't mine.

“Simmons, can we admit that it could’ve gone better?” Leo muttered to his best friend and partner in S.H.I.E.L.D. “We’re trying to pretend to be grown-ups here!”

“Trying to pretend? Leo, we _are_ grown-ups-“

“Not the way that you ran away from agent May and the rest of our new co-workers and friends,” Leo pointed-out, not unreasonably. “What happened back then?”

“I don’t know!” Jemma wailed, as she waved the blue-colored pencil, clutched in her hand. “It’s just, and just, and Leo, we want to be accepted by other agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that aren’t us, so why is it all going wrong now?”

“Because Grant is with Skye, having fun in a field agent kind of way, the sort that we don’t like and are afraid of,” Leo said curtly. “After agent Rumlow, Ward is the biggest man that I’ve met, and probably the scariest, aside from the Avengers-“

“Captain Rogers isn’t that scary-“

“Captain Rogers is captain Rogers,” both of the FitzSimmons looked at the poster in question, one that had not been copied yet, because their derived printer/scanner/copier/etc. was not yet keyed into the right manner. In theory, it was not supposed to be able to be keyed at all, but it was the FitzSimmons, so of course it was going to be. “I mean, can you imagine a poster of this of agent Barton-“

“Fitz, we made posters of agent Barton, especially in a certain focus,” Jemma said matter-of-factly. “He may not be captain Rogers – no one is captain Rogers – but he is classically proportioned-“

“Jemma!” Fitz all but wailed. “Not here and now!”

“Why not?”

“Because, because,” Fitz went white, then red, realizing that he was rather jealous of the older agent, (because agent Barton was Hawkeye, and he was not anyone yet), “just because,” he looked down and continued to draw his own drawing in the drawing book. “Never mind. What are you drawing?”

“I could ask you the same thing-“

“I’m drawing a meadow,” Fitz said brightly, waving his own colored pencil – a green one. “See? Here are butterflies, dragonflies, and a ladybug-“

“You incorporated the red from Skye’s pencil into the ladybug-“

“Well, what’s the problem with that?”

“I made my drawing without incorporating any other colors, really,” Jemma glared at her best and oldest friend in S.H.I.E.L.D. and otherwise. “See? It is a navy scene-“

“Of course it is, you Englishwoman-“

“Hey! Before I revealed myself to be a genius scientist I wanted to be a plucky sailor!”

“You did?”

“Is it so hard to believe?”

“Yes!” Leo snapped without thinking. Jemma tackled him and together they began to roll on the floor, not acting very maturely, actually. 

“If you two are quite finished-?” Melinda May asked them wryly, as Jemma got the top hand, (as she always did, because – reasons), and found herself, alongside Fitz, under scrutiny by the rest of the Bus team. “Do we even want to know why-?”

“Because it’s fun,” Fitz snapped without thinking.

“Ah,” the other four spoke in a meaningful voice, causing the FitzSimmons to turn red. 

“Can we try this again?” Jemma said sourly. “Besides, aren’t you all have some sort of a meeting-?”

“No, we’re just trying to bond, trying to play board games, and do you want to join in?” Skye replied instead, as she and the rest of Bus team joined the FitzSimmons in their lab.

“Really?” it was Jemma’s turn to change colors in a completely natural manner. “Awesome!” She paused and added, in a shakier voice: “We, me and Fitz, uh, we finished the drawing?”

There was a pause as everyone looked at the now multicolored page. Between Grant’s desert and Skye’s square, across from Coulson’s snow-scape and May’s night city, there was now other two pieces – a green meadow and a blue sea.

“Very lovely,” Coulson muttered, looking oddly thoughtful, even for him. “But I admit that I was expecting something more matching. Why not?”

“Because we’re more than just the amazing FitzSimmons!” Jemma snapped oddly sharply. “Look at them! Look at us! They are the amazing FitzSimmons! They are a couple! They hold hands! They do tricks! They do science! They are a package deal! Get them together for a special discount! We are more than a couple! We are more than geniuses-!”

“In a non-evil, non-S.H.I.E.L.D. manner,” Fitz added brightly. “In a completely mundane one-!”

“True, but also false,” Grant spoke suddenly, with an odd look in his eyes. “Your paths took you to S.H.I.E.L.D. Your lives are anything but mundane now, and this how it will be.”

“…This was surprisingly insightful _and_ scary,” Leo muttered to no one in particular. “Can you go back please to being some sort of a human robot instead?”

“I’ve a different idea,” Coulson said suddenly. “Maybe you should be worried about the smoke?”

There was a pause as everyone looked around and indeed saw clouds of smoke that were coming out of the Bus’s printing/scanning/copying/faxing/etc./etc. machine. “Oh, Bantha poodoo!” Fitz swore loudly and raced over to the device, where he began to press all sorts of buttons in all sorts of sequences. The result was not long in waiting – the Bus blacked-out, as did the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ base it was docked in.

“Fitz!” everyone else called-out as one.

“Sorry,” Fitz shot back. “I’m a bad, bad boy. Spank me!”

There was another pause that Fitz used to hide himself under a table, red from embarrassment. 

“Leo,” Surprisingly, the Cavalry did not sound too angry, more like exasperated. “Simmons may claim that you were the stupid sexy one in this relationship, but nevertheless, try not to change too soon too quickly, would you?”

“…” Fitz said nothing, but that was just as okay, as the lights, and the rest of electricity, (well, electricity-powered devices) came back also. That was good, but the skull-octopus logo and the proclamation amounting to ‘out of the darkness, into light’ that came with it was another thing.

“Fitz,” Grant said sourly. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything! It just overheated!” Fitz wailed. “What is this crap, anyhow?”

“It’s Hydra,” Fitz,” Coulson spoke, sounding oddly wearily, but before he could elaborate, electricity died again. “Of course,” he said bitterly. “What else will happen?”

“Sorry,” Fitz muttered to no one in particular. “Sorry for ruining this day-“

“Don’t, Leo,” Melinda muttered quietly back. “You and Simmons are one – okay, two – of us.”

“Really?” the FitzSimmons perked-up.

“Yes,” came the reply… just as lights came back, and Nick Fury’s voice over the speakers proclaimed that everything is okay now, all will be explained later – but that was another story.

End


End file.
